1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to methods of producing cheese-type food and aged-type cheese.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Conventionally, processed cheese and cheese-type food are typically produced by preparing natural cheese as a starting material, adding appropriate emulsifying salts, heating and then cooling.
However, since natural cheese must be left to ripening with the passage of time, the number of days for ripening cheese are limited when processed cheese and cheese-type food are produced.
Therefore, enough cheese and cheese-type food are not necessarily produced to meet needs or demand.
Natural cheese, oil the other hand, is produced by adding rennet to the liquid milk, cutting and stirring to separate out whey and to obtain curd, which is then fermented under suitable conditions.
This method requires huge investment in equipment as well as a skilled artisan.
Furthermore, milk as a starting material cannot be stored very long, and must be made into natural cheese as soon as possible after purchase. This factor also makes it difficult to produce desired products in accordance with the needs and demand.
To solve these problems, methods of producing cheese-type products from powder such as casein have been proposed (e.g. Japanese Patent Laid Open Publication No. 56-68349, and Japanese Patent Publication Nos. 56-10013 and 57-2294).
These are, however, methods of producing cheese-like food and no methods of producing natural cheeses by ripening have been reported. Besides, in most of those reports, acid casein or calcium caseinate is used to obtain cheese-like food which have the smell of casein that is too strong for flavorful cheese.